Wednesday, July 20, 2011

After third, fourth, and fifth tries with the vacuum extractor, it was clear that something else needed to be done. The baby was stuck. Dr. J told me that she thought I really needed an episiotomy. This was, of course, one of the interventions that I most wanted to avoid. It was an intervention that I'd read was performed much too routinely. In that moment I was so thankful that I had a provider who I'd had long discussions with about all of my options, and who I trusted had my very best interests in mind- my midwife, who was RIGHT there by my side. I looked her in the eyes and asked her if I needed it... and she said yes. It was decided.

After Dr. J cut an episiotomy, we tried pushing with the vacuum assistance again. It still wasn't working. She told me that she'd need to cut more. This time I didn't hesitate in telling her that was okay. It was around this point when I realized that more doctors were coming into my room. They were setting up around a warming bed. My midwives explained that when my baby came out, I wouldn't be able to hold him right away. They would need to check him first. I didn't panic. Again, I don't know why.

Instead of the minutes rushing by, now they were stalling, and I felt like I was on that bed pushing for hours on end. In reality, it had only been about 45 minutes. It seemed like Dr. J was working almost as hard as I was, and I know she was committed to helping me achieve the natural birth I wanted, and to letting me push for just as long as it was safe to do so. But some doubt was beginning to creep in. I could see the nurses on the phone in the room, some serious looking glances between Dr. J and the midwives, and I knew that we were only minutes away from discussing a cesarean section.

I gave myself a silent pep talk. I was so close. I felt like there was nothing left in me, but I forced myself to give everything I could to the next set of pushes. The nurse to my left looked me in the eyes and said, okay, we need to get your baby out now, and I know you can do it. I felt a contraction starting up and I took a deep breath in. I had a feeling that this was it, my last chance at doing this the way I wanted to do it. My husband and my nurses held tightly onto my legs and I pushed with every last bit of energy that I had left. After the first count of ten I looked down to see my son being born.

One smaller push and his torso was out as well, and feeling his body enter the world was one of the craziest and most amazing things I've ever experienced. Just as I can't put into words the intense pain that filled that day, I also can't describe the way I felt when I first saw my son. I have never felt such joy in my life. After thanking God, my first thought was amazement at how big he was! How had he ever fit inside of me?! As promised, he was whisked off to the warming table on the opposite side of the room immediately. Everyone around me was busy telling me that I had done a great job and that Finn was doing fine. There was some concern about his breathing at first, which he was definitely doing, but not with the level of gusto that everyone would have preferred. It was probably a minute later that I first heard him cry. Only then did I realize that he hadn't done so immediately. Again, I had this overwhelming sense that he was okay. Only looking back am I completely freaked out.

My husband was busy jumping back and forth between me and our son. Every time he came to my side I pushed him back to Finn, saying go be with him!, insisting that I was just fine, and confused actually as to why I wouldn't be. I felt great. On top of the world and truly never better. Dr. J and my midwives were stitching me up, which I found mildly annoying, but nothing more. As soon as he was born I had zero pain.

They brought Finn over to me before taking him out of the room for a few more tests, and I'll never forget that moment. He was wrapped in a tight little bundle, and I looked at his face for the first time and just couldn't believe that he was mine. That was the moment when it was all worth it. Every single contraction, every push, every single time when I thought I couldn't do it, and even the chaos that happened later.

My husband went with Finn and I stayed behind as Dr. J finished up with me, and I was joined my my Mom just a few minutes later. She had arrived at the hospital just as Finn was being born. I was high on adrenaline as I told her the story of the day and tried to describe how amazing her grandson was. It wasn't long before Finn was given a clean bill of health, and he and I were reunited. I got to hold him then for the first time. My husband and I couldn't get over how in love with him we were already. All this time that I had been pregnant, I was never able to really imagine what it would be like to have a real little person there at the end. Our little person. And now he was here and he was perfect and I couldn't imagine loving him more.

Monday, July 18, 2011

********************
A new nursing shift came in at 6 pm, just as I was starting to push. I was annoyed by the disruption for about two seconds, as I quickly realized how wonderful my new nurses were. One stood by my head to my left, and my husband stood on my right. He helped to support my neck as a nurse and one of my midwives supported my legs.

I had thought ahead of time that I might not like "directed pushing" or having anyone count out loud while I pushed. Turns out that I really needed and wanted to be cheered on when the time came. They explained to me that I should push "into my bottom", and that's exactly what it felt like I was doing. (Pooping during labor was never a huge fear of mine, but I was happy nevertheless that I didn't.)

Pushing was such a huge relief from the pain. Now instead of just waiting for each contraction to pass, I was busy doing something during each one. It was also a whole lot of work though. I very much needed all of the encouragement I was getting from everyone in the room. They were doing all they could to help me, but it was pretty much my show in the end. I pushed for three counts of ten with each contraction. During that time I can't say that I was in pain at all. The pressure was beyond intense, but pushing made it bearable. I heard one of the new nursing assistants ask how I could tell when to push. She was confused because she couldn't tell that I was laboring without an epidural. I was pretty damn proud of myself in that moment. The nurses and my midwives were telling me that my baby was moving down and that I was doing a great job.

What happened after this point is a bit of blur to me. I had some pretty amazing natural endorphins running through my system by now, and I think part of the work they did was to keep me calm no matter what was happening around me. Thinking back about it makes me wonder why I wasn't freaking out, but at the time I had such a calm about me, which helped me focus on the hard work I was doing trying to push my baby out.

I had only been pushing for two or three contractions when I started noticing some buzz around the machine monitoring my baby's heart rate. It was explained to me that he "wasn't liking pushing very much", but not to worry. My midwives had me turn onto my side and one of the nurses gave me some oxygen. When changing my position a couple of times didn't seem to change anything, I was told that my baby needed a longer break than he was getting in between contractions. So for the next contraction, I needed to not push. I can't even describe how hard it was not to push when everything in my body was screaming at me to PUSH. It was next to impossible, but just like everything else on that day, I managed to do it. His heart rate came back up reassuringly, but it went down again with the next contraction.

My midwives explained that they were going to ask their back-up obstetrician to come in for some assistance, but again that I shouldn't worry. A cheerful blonde doctor appeared just a few minutes later and introduced herself as Dr. J. She asked my husband and I which one of us was the stubborn one, because surely our baby was taking after one of us in this situation. Her demeanor immediately put me at ease, and I didn't waste any of the precious energy I had left on getting worked up. My picture perfect labor had just taken a turn, but I still had all the confidence in the world that everything was going to be okay.

{Warning: this next part may not be best for the squeamish.}

The first thing that Dr. J wanted to do after watching a couple of contractions was to use a vacuum extractor to help pull my baby out. She explained that I was doing a good job moving him down but that after each push he was moving back up the birth canal. Normally I'm pretty sure this is allowed to go on for awhile, but the baby's heart rate was still causing some concern and he needed to come out faster. Dr. J explained that we would work together: me pushing and her pulling. With the next contraction we did just that. I heard a loud POP and looked down expectantly. What I had heard was the vacuum slipping off before it could do its job, and what I saw was a whole lot of blood.

Here is where things get really fuzzy for me. What I do know is that the mood in the room suddenly felt very different, and it was all I could do not to start to panic. Dr. J said immediately, "ruptured hematoma", and the midwives nodded. Hematoma? I knew that was just a fancy word for a bruise. And bleeding? Wasn't that fairly normal during birth? I looked for my husband, who was still standing right by my side. He was trying so hard to stay calm, and gave me the most reassuring look he could manage.

Dr. J tried the vacuum extractor a few more times, but it just wasn't working. I was pushing with everything I had, but I didn't feel like I was making any progress. I learned later that there was too much blood for the vacuum extractor to really grip my baby's head. I also learned later that this was the point when there started to be some concern for my safety and not just the baby's. At the time I had no idea.

What had happened is fairly rare, I'm told. I had developed a hematoma about three inches up inside of me. No one knows if it developed at some point during pregnancy or during labor itself. It wasn't due to any trauma, rather just to all the increased pressure. It was basically a blood-filled area that burst as the baby's head pressed up against it. I have no idea how large it was, but it contained enough blood (that I subsequently lost) that I needed two blood transfusions after delivery and an extra night's stay in the hospital. Normally when a hematoma is developing it's extremely painful. Since I was in active labor at the time, I can't say for sure, but I really don't recall any pain in that area in particular. I also remember being completely painfree between contractions which really wouldn't make sense if the hematoma itself was adding to my pain. So if hematomas are rare, and painfree hematomas are even rarer, I really shouldn't have been surprised when, despite being told how rare a reoccurence would be, it reoccured. After being home for 24 hours the hematoma returned and ruptured, causing an arterial bleed. I'm not sure that I'll ever want to write in detail about what happened on that day, four days after I gave birth. It began as the most glorious Sunday morning, our first at home with our beautiful new baby. I had just told my husband that I was feeling absolute elation over our new life. Minutes later I was on the floor in a pool of blood. I have never been so terrified, and it's hard for me to think about. I try hard to remember how blessed I am to have survived it rather than how unlucky I was for it to have happened in the first place. I am so very very grateful for my level-headed husband, quick-thinking on-call midwife, and an amazing crew of paramedics. An ambulance ride, emergency surgery, four more blood transfusions, and another two nights in the hospital later we were allowed to return home for the second time.

But back to the delivery room, where I had no idea that anything was or would be wrong. I was in a bubble where I had only one goal, and that was getting a healthy baby out of me. I know my husband was right by my side this whole time, but I'm pretty sure he was avoiding eye contact with me now, knowing that he had a less than reassuring look on his face. It didn't matter though, because I really did have tunnel vision. I could pay attention to nothing but pushing with everything that I had in me.

Friday, July 15, 2011

********************While being checked for progress that third time, the thought that was running through my head was "please at least be a seven". That was my magic number, the line I'd drawn between feeling like maybe I could get through this and feeling like I couldn't. I was absolutely elated and energized when my midwife told me I was "a good eight". Eight! Eight sounds so very close to ten. I was thrilled. Things were about to change though, as eight also means the transition stage of labor.

My contractions quickly started to feel very differently than they had all day. I had been finding a way to get through the earlier contractions, mostly by relaxing, breathing, and escaping somewhere else inside my head. That was quickly becoming impossible. I'm not going to lie. Transition sucks. It was by far the most intense pain I've ever experienced. I'd try to describe it, but I really think I've blocked it out. I was lucky to still have breaks in between contractions, but they were becoming shorter and shorter, allowing nothing more than a quick catch of breath.

I survived by sitting on the end of the bed and staring into my husband's eyes. Getting through this part of labor was so much more active for me. No longer could I just will my body into a trancelike state. Now I had to fight to stay on top of the pain. I shifted around uncomfortably, held on to my husband's arms, and made a whole lot of noise. Along with the tightening pain that I'd be experiencing all day, transition brought with it an indescribably intense feeling of pressure. There was just no relaxing against it. My Hypnobabies track kept playing in my ears, but now it seemed laughable. I'd reached a place where it couldn't help me.

Later my husband would say that I was staring so hard at him that he thought at one point I was trying to transfer my pain through my eyes to him. I knew I was kind of acting like a crazy person, but in that moment he was my rock and I just had to trust that he knew his sane wife would return some day. For now he would have to handle the crazy version. Thinking back about this part I just cannot imagine having any one else in the room besides my husband. I needed to feel like I could do, say, scream anything I wanted to, and the only person in the world who I can trust at that level is my husband.

Once again my mind went to the epidural. I didn't care about the deal I had made with myself about my progress; I was too desperate for some relief. I asked my midwives if it was too late to get one, and they said that I could get one any time I wanted before ten centimeters. Okay then! It was settled. I would like to stop feeling this, thank you very much! But it wasn't that easy. It would probably take close to an hour before the anesthesiologist could get there, they told me. Also, while the epidural would take away the pain sensations, it would do nothing for the pressure. I have no idea how true these statements were. My midwives were after all trying to do what I'd asked them beforehand to do: help me have a drug-free birth. They told me that every single woman asks for an epidural during transition. I demanded to know how much longer this was going to last. They of course told me that there was no way of knowing. I kept demanding anyways. The older midwife finally told me that it was very unlikely that it would last more than two hours.

I somehow found a new resolve then, and with my husband's steady gaze, found a way to get through each contraction, one at a time. As I put each one behind me, I reminded myself that there really is no memory of pain. In the brief moments between them, I didn't feel any. It also helped to think about the fact that that contraction that had just ended? I would never feel it ever again. My midwives suggested that I walk around, but I looked at them as if they were crazy. I also had no interest in getting back in the tub, knowing that I wouldn't be allowed to actually give birth there (hospital policy), and not being able to bear the thought of climbing in and out of it again.

After about forty-five minutes, the pressure I was feeling intensified yet again. I yelled out and told my midwives about it. They let me know that it was normal during this stage of labor, but it felt distinctly different to me. Just a couple of contractions later the feeling turned into a searing burn. A comment about that sensation brought on a flurry of activity in the room. My midwives put on gowns, the nurses wheeled over a tray of instruments, and someone asked if I wanted a mirror. My progress was checked for the fourth and last time and my midwife confirmed that I was a ten and ready to push!

I don't think I've ever been so excited. I'd progressed from eight to ten in just under an hour! I think everyone in the room was surprised that things had moved so quickly. It was a rough hour, but now it was over. It was the only part of labor that I will not try to tell you was bearable. It wasn't, and yet, I did. I felt so proud and so accomplished. I had gotten through the worst of it and I just couldn't believe how close I was to meeting my baby. I was given the option to reach down and feel my son's head, which I did. Such a strange and amazing thing, touching the top of his head. They wheeled over a huge mirror, but I have very little recollection of seeing much of anything. He was so close, they told me, "two pushes and he'll be out!"

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

********************
I rode out most of the afternoon laboring in the tub with my Hypnobabies soundtrack. I braced myself through the transitions from tub to bed and the twenty minutes of monitoring that followed. Those were the longest minutes of the whole day, and I couldn't help but watch the clock during them, yelling for the nurse to come and unhook me from the monitors just as soon as the time was up. Otherwise, as long as I was in that tub, my labor really flew by for me. Sometime around 2 pm, which marked three hours at the hospital and nine hours of labor, I asked for something to eat, and was given the options of Jell-o, soup broth or a popsicle. Ahead of time, I had prepared myself to argue if I decided I needed something else, but when the time came I really didn't want to eat anything more substantial. I chose the Jell-o, and inhaled two cups of the vaguely named "tropical" flavor. My husband ate the third cup that we were given, which was strawberry, or cherry, or some other artificial red flavor. So that he could keep up his energy and be my perfect labor coach, we had a bag of snacks carefully purchased and packed ahead of time. Which of course we left in the car. You can imagine that I wasn't about to let him leave my side long enough to use the restroom, let alone run back out to the car. He managed the job of perfect labor coach anyway on the sustenance of one cup of red generic Jell-o.

As the time ticked on towards five o'clock and the return of my midwives to check my progress, the pain definitely intensified. I played a few different mind games with myself to get through it. One technique I tried used my so-called unproductive contraction pattern to my advantage. I had been told that the smaller aftershocks of pain after my contractions were called couplets. At this point my contractions were coming about three minutes apart and there was about a thirty second gap in between the first stronger contraction and the smaller one. With all of those contractions coming so closely spaced together, it was difficult to keep track of which was which. So I decided to tell myself with the start of each contraction that this one was the smaller one, the easy one. I did it over and over again. Just relax, this is the easy one. Apparently I am pretty gullible while in labor.

Even with the success of all my mind games, the exhaustion was starting to set in, and around four o'clock I remember telling my husband that I couldn't do this much longer. Nothing was working. I was trying desperately to relax, but the contractions were getting so strong that it was nearly impossible not to tighten up in response to them. I pushed my husband's hand away when he tried to press on my forehead, which had been so helpful a few hours prior. I so desperately wanted a break. Thoughts of getting an epidural started to creep into my mind. I had heard other women describe it as the most wonderful thing ever. Women even took naps during their labor after getting an epidural! Why the heck hadn't I wanted that again?

I needed a break so badly that I decided to take one. That's right. Eleven hours into labor I decided I'm not going to have this next contraction. Nope, not going to feel it. And just like that I tricked my brain into just not feeling the intense bout of pain that was my next contraction. And the next. I tricked myself so well that I actually started to worry that my labor was stalling. I'm really not sure how I did this, but looking back it seems like I truly had entered the semi-hypnotized state that the tracks I'd been listening to for hours had promised. The Hypnobabies tracks were just so amazing in keeping me calm and still. The trance was sort of like that funny thing that happens when you're driving to work and you look up and realize you're there, but don't have any recollection of the last five miles you just drove. Over and over I heard the soft voice tell me that every hour I was in labor would feel like ten minutes, and that every contraction would be easier than the last. It had seemed like hocus-pocus to me at first, but at this point I was buying into it one-hundred percent. Each contraction really did feel easier than the last.

It was almost five o'clock and my midwives were due to return any minute. I interrupted my trance just long enough to tell my husband that I was pretty much done with labor. I was doing well, but I knew I just didn't have much energy left in me. I told him that if I wasn't at least seven centimeters dilated when they checked me that I was going to ask for an epidural. I felt okay with my decision, like I had really given it my all, and that I was proud of how far I'd gotten without any drugs. My husband reminded me, like we'd discussed ahead of time, that getting an epidural was not part of my plan. I told him that I hoped I wouldn't need it, but that I just couldn't do this for that much longer. It had been about six hours since I had last been checked, and at that time I had been four centimeters dilated. I told my husband that either the Hypnobabies stuff had really worked, or my labor had stalled and that was the reason I was feeling less pain. I tried to be confident that it was the former, but if I'm being honest, I was pretty nervous about that check.

The young nurse came in to move me back to the bed, and she asked if I had gotten better at dealing with the contractions or had my labor slowed. I knew by now to ignore her obnoxiously worded question, but it was the one I was asking myself as well. I climbed onto the bed and held my breath as my midwife checked my progress.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Although I wanted to snap at the young nurse who had just let me know just how much harder my labor was going to get, I didn't have to. Older-wiser nurse cut her off just as she was telling me that I didn't yet know what a ten was going to be like by telling her to mark in my chart that I'd rather not be asked my pain level. If you want a sure-fire route to an epidural, try stopping what you're doing to manage your labor pain and thinking carefully about just how much pain you're feeling. If I had written a birth plan, I'd be highlighting "NO pain scale questions" in bright yellow.

After what seemed like an eternity, my required twenty minutes on the monitors were up and I was allowed to get off of the monitors and into the tub. Tiny as it was, that tub was heaven. It had a handheld showerhead, and I wasted no time in getting that thing turned up to the hottest setting possible and spraying it directly on my huge belly as I sat in the water. I can't even describe the relief. And that's how I survived... I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that I was in a big comfy whirlpool tub rather than scrunched into a narrow one. I wore nothing but a sports bra and my iPhone earbuds from then on out, not caring one bit about the parade of nurses coming in and out of my room, just like everyone says. My husband sat in a chair next to the tub, holding my precious phone, which was playing my Hypnobabies labor track, and leaning over to aim the stream of water from the showerhead on my stomach. He had a backache from all the hours he spent leaning over into that tub. He wins more points than he already had for the fact that he didn't complain about it one bit.

The whole labor process was such a mind game for me. As hippie as it sounds, I took all the advice from the yoga birth workshop I attended and from Ina May's Childbirth book about picturing your body opening up with every contraction. I thought about each one as a wave washing over me, and I tried to remind myself that the pain was purposeful and important and good. Not trying to fight against it was the key for me in getting through it. The more I could relax every last muscle in my body and let it do what it needed to do, the better I felt. I started out breathing deeply and slowly, but later found that shallower breaths felt much better. I gave up clenching my fists and my face and instead tried to lay as still as possible, concentrating on the feeling of the water spraying against my skin. I basically tried to trust my body and stay the hell out of its way.

Even though I didn't follow the program exactly and definitely slacked on listening to all the tracks that I was supposed to during my pregnancy, I leaned heavily on Hypnobabies during my labor. There is one technique in the program where if you feel you can't relax as much as you need to, you can ask your birth partner to press on your forehead, say the word "release", and instantly you'll find yourself more deeply relaxed. My husband and I were supposed to practice that technique in the weeks leading up to labor, and we found ourselves in fits of laughter more than once when we did. Somewhere around eight hours into labor though, I wasn't laughing, and instead whispering "help" which signaled my husband to press on my forehead just as we'd half-assedpracticed. While he did that, I worked on pretending that I couldn't feel anything below my shoulders, and concentrated on the feeling of his cool hand against my face. Thinking back on it now, it seems ridiculous. At the time, it seemed life-saving.

My time spent in the tub was challenging, but I felt like I was doing a good job and that I was really handling labor well. Just about once every hour though (I have a feeling it wasn't quite that often but it seemed frequent), young nurse would pop into the bathroom and announce that it was time to be monitored. As soon as I climbed out of the tub (which was a production in itself), my whole body would be gripped with a strong contraction that I was never able to relax my way through. It was jarring, and those contractions felt absolutely terrible. Somehow they felt grinding, as if my body were composed only of teeth that were gnashing against each other. I'm sure it was the rude interruption of my zen-like bathtub state that made them feel so terrible, but terrible they were nonetheless.

During one of these interruptions, I decided that it would be a good time to ask about the strange feeling I'd been experiencing after each contraction. The pain would stop for a moment, and then I'd feel what seemed to be a small contraction again, almost like an aftershock. The second contraction was definitely much easier to deal with, but it was still a contraction. I started to ask older-wiser nurse about what I was feeling, but younger nurse heard me from across the room and decided to answer for her. "Couplets. You're having couplets. It just means you're not having a productive contraction pattern!" Then she smiled proudly as if she had given the winning answer on a game show.

(If you look carefully you can see a little hill following a big hill... one of my "couplet" contractions.)

Seriously? You're going to tell a laboring woman who thinks she's doing a good job that her contraction pattern (which she has no control over, thankyouverymuch) is not productive? I started thinking that all of that pain I'd been feeling was for no good reason at all, and it made the next few contractions just that much harder to deal with. What if I'm not progressing? I let my mind wander to the thought of a terrifyingly long labor, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with worry. Then something I had read in Ina May's Guide to Childbirth popped into my head. Your body is not a lemon. My body had successfully conceived, incubated, and grown a human over the past nine months. And it did that with so little conscious help from me. I didn't have to instruct my uterus to grow larger, tell the egg to implant or oversee the development of the perfectly four-chambered heart that we had seen on ultrasounds. Who was I to start doubting my body's abilities now? The full passage from Ina May's book reads:

"Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body."

That nurse was not going to play a part in my labor story any longer. I ignored her from then on out and that was the last time that I doubted my body's ability to birth a baby. I took a deep breath and got back to the business of staying out of my own way.

Friday, July 8, 2011

After my water broke I remember foolishly being frustrated that I had to change out of my favorite pair of yoga pants, the pants that I had planned on wearing as I labored around the house for the next few hours. I quickly calculated in my head that we'd definitely still be at home in an hour and a half and so threw them into the wash. (No, I hadn't yet learned my lesson about not being a crazy planner.) Almost immediately though, my contractions became noticeably different. I felt like the waves I was riding had changed from a slow rocking to a nauseating swell that made me change the way I coped with them. The counter-pressure became not just nice but urgently necessary and I yelled sharply to my husband when he wasn't immediately providing it with each new contraction. I also started vocalizing, something that I wasn't sure I could ever picture myself doing. I tried to remind myself to keep my voice low, and found myself making buzzing noises through my lips, a sound that my not-in-labor self cannot now recreate. At this point, and probably in part due to the strange noises now coming from his wife, my husband was starting to get a bit nervous, and to be honest, starting to drive me a bit crazy as he kept asking if we should head to the hospital. I reminded him a couple of times of our plan to labor at home as long as possible, but after a few more contractions I was ready as well. We called the midwife again and I'm pretty sure she could tell by the change in my voice from my previous call that things were moving along. She told us to head in to the hospital and she'd meet us there.

We scrambled to grab our things and were heading out the door when I remembered that I had really wanted one last photograph of me at my most pregnant. My husband snapped one shot, and prepared to take one five more- as had been our routine over the past 39 weeks. Instead I snapped at him after just one that I was not going to stand there all day and to stop taking my picture.

My smile in this picture though, is not fake. Something that I found SO amazing about labor, and that I'd remark on many, many times throughout the day, was that when I wasn't having a contraction, I felt zero pain. It's really a strange feeling, to be gripped by a crazy amount of pain in one moment, and to be completely released from it in the next moment. I can't think of any other time when that is true.

The ride to the hospital, although just over five minutes long, was miserable, as I was expecting from pretty much every story of labor that I've ever heard. I sat in the back, unbuckled next to the car seat, begging my husband in one breath to slow down and in the next to hurry up and get there. There is just no comfortable way to labor in a car. In our frenzy we forgot that our hospital has valet parking and instead drove into the parking garage, found a spot on the second floor, and took the elevator down to the lobby. I'm sure we were quite a sight, me gripping my pillow and clearly in active labor, and my husband carrying three big bags. Oh hello friendly folks in the elevator, don't mind me, or my huffing, puffing and carrying on, just in labor here, no big deal. I tried to pretend like I was totally calm and that I knew what I was doing!

I was offered a wheelchair once we got inside but refused it, as sitting down seemed like the worst idea ever. I preferred to hang my arms around my husband's neck with each contraction, pausing in the hallway and making quite the scene. Finally we made our way to labor and delivery, where we were given a bed in the triage area, and I was told to change into a hospital gown.

It seemed pretty quiet that day, which was strange, being a Wednesday morning, prime time for scheduled inductions at my intervention-happy hospital. I asked a nurse if they were busy or not, having my eye on one of two rooms that I knew had tubs in them. She said that triage had been busy but that they had been sending a lot of early-laboring moms home. (I grinned when she added that she didn't think I'd be one of those heading home.) During our hospital tour we were told that the tubs were in the two largest rooms and so they were usually reserved for moms of multiples. The tubs were little and not much to get excited about, but I had heard so many good things about the calming effects of water that I really wanted to try laboring in one. I smiled the sweetest smile I could manage and asked if I could have one of those rooms.

Waiting in triage for my midwife to arrive was a bit excruciating, as I had to sit up on a bed and my husband couldn't help in the same way he had before. I was really feeling like I was losing my rhythm in dealing with the contractions already, and so I decided to try listening to my Hypnobabies labor soundtrack on my iPhone. The way the Hypnobabies program works is that you listen to different tracks on a specific schedule in preparation for labor, but you don't listen to the labor track until you're actually doing it. I didn't follow the program very well, and hadn't done nearly as much work as I should have, so I didn't know how much I'd get out of it. Who knew that once I turned it on I wouldn't turn it off for the next eight hours.

My midwife, Kim, arrived and I was so thrilled to see that she wasn't alone! She had with her the student midwife, Brooke, that I had seen and loved the week before. While I also liked Kim, she was quiet and no nonsense and I didn't feel a real connection with her. Brooke was bubbly and enthusiastic and I had really hit it off with her. I was thrilled that as a student she was allowed to pretty much do all of my care while the other midwife supervised. She started off my checking my progress. I had my cervix checked a total of four times during my labor, once being earlier in the week when I was one centimeter dilated. Each time I held my breath, and not because it was terribly painful (I didn't find it that bad), but because mentally I knew how much the number would affect my attitude. I was thrilled when Brooke informed me that I was "a four, a good four". I didn't consider anything I'd been through so far particularly unbearable, and I was already a four... that sounded fabulous to me.

I reminded Brooke how much I'd like to be in a room with a tub and she said she'd see what she could do. A nurse came into to take us to our room and I immediately ran in to see which one we were given. Hallelujah! It was a huge room, one of two on the whole floor with the elusive tub.

The tub was tiny as expected, and for a moment I wished that we were across the street at the birth center, where the tubs were huge and had jets. Next time, I told myself. I had my husband start the tub up for me right away anyways. When I first got to the room I had to be monitored for thirty minutes. Although I had the option of a portable monitor I still wouldn't be able to get into the tub with it on, and so I opted for the traditional one and tried to relax on the bed the best I could. My midwives explained that I needed to be monitored for twenty minutes out of each hour and my nurse inserted a hep-lock after I explained that I did not want an IV. I was instructed that I'd need to constantly be drinking water if I wanted to avoid IV fluids. Two nurses came in to introduce themselves, and the younger of the two burst out with a rushed speech: "Hi! I know what I'm doing! I might not look like I know what I'm doing because I'm new here but I'm not new to nursing, I'm just new here and so sometimes I look like I'm confused but I'm not, I know what I'm doing!" Let's just say that wasn't very reassuring.

While I waited for the initial monitoring to be over, young nurse started firing off questions and entering my information into the computer. At first I was patient with her, but it seemed like she was asking me things that I'd answered before and should have been already there. It turns out she was just confirming everything, but in the most drawn out and annoying way possible. Not fun normally- excruciating while in labor. She then asked me for the first time what my pain level was. I understand why she was asking, but my midwives had already made it clear that I was prepared for, and had the goal of, a natural labor. I knew what drugs were available to me, and I didn't need her to monitor my pain level for me. I explained that to her again as I told her I was maybe about a seven.

I tried managing my contractions the way we had at home- by leaning over a chair and having hubs put pressure on my back. This had brought me so much relief only an hour earlier, but now it seemed awful and I snapped at my poor husband to stop. Throughout the day I definitely had to change up the way I dealt with the pain many times. I tried to focus on the words in my ears on the Hypnobabies track that was playing. I had let them fade into the background, but now I found more relief by slowing my breathing and focusing on each word. I was buzzing my lips a lot at this point too, and my midwives assured me that I was doing an excellent job before they headed back to their office for a few hours. I was a bit surprised as I thought they'd play a much more active role in helping me manage labor than they did. Thank God for my husband. Despite all the snapping I did at him during contractions, I thanked him profusely in between them.

In the middle of a contraction I was interrupted by young nurse asking once again what my pain level was. I mumbled a weary "I don't know" and she launched into explaining to me just exactly how the 1-10 pain rating scale system works. She finished with this helpful tidbit: "You might think what you're feeling now is a ten, but you really want to give yourself some room because it's going to get A LOT worse."

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The first thing I remember on the day my son was born was rolling over and searching for my phone to check the time. 5 am. I had been tossing and turning for awhile, willing my eyes to stay closed despite the nervous excitement that came with each cramp that rolled over my midsection. They say you'll know when it's real, and despite thinking I had been going into labor multiple times over the past couple of weeks, this time there was no question. The pain was different, commanding my attention though still completely tolerable, and reminded me a bit of the kind of cramping that sends you running to the bathroom or reaching for some pepto bismol. I knew we had a long day ahead so I tried as hard as I could to fall back asleep. I couldn't help checking the time though, and noticing that contractions were coming about every six or seven minutes. I thought about waking my husband, but knew he could use as much sleep as he could get too. So I lay in the dark and silently talked to my baby. Today's the day, little man. It was a bit exhilarating, and I felt like we had a secret between us; only Finn and I knew that today would be his birthday.

My husband's alarm went off at 6:30 and I didn't let him roll over to hit snooze, instead waking him with a cheerful "you're not going to work today!". His eyes popped open and he looked like a kid on Christmas morning. "Really!?" Yes, I was sure. He kicked into perfect husband mode and made sure I was okay, got me a fresh glass of water, and helped me make a mental list of the last minute things we needed to get together. We sat in bed as he timed my contractions on his phone for the next hour or so and tried to sleep a bit in between. I knew I wanted to take a shower and get ready before things got too intense, so I yelled to my husband every time I had a contraction in the shower. We both knew that we didn't have to be so crazy about timing each one, but it made us feel like we were maintaining some level of control over the situation, so we kept it up.

Crazy as it sounds, I decided to blow dry and straighten my hair. I wanted to feel like myself. I also knew I probably wouldn't have the chance to do so for the next few days in the hospital. Also nuts was my husband's decision to give himself a haircut. We laughed at ourselves as we got ready together, pausing and turning the blowdryer and hair clippers off every five minutes or so when a new contraction came. Things were getting a bit more intense and I asked my husband to press on my lower back in order to apply counter pressure with each contraction as we had learned in our yoga birth class. It was really helping and I was breathing really deeply in order to get through the waves of pain, which were lasting about 45 seconds. I was almost enjoying the process at this point, and feeling proud of myself for working through the contractions. At some point during this time while we were getting ready on the third floor, our dog starting barking ridiculously loudly on the first floor. That's certainly not out of the ordinary for him, but he wasn't stopping and that's not so normal. Finally we realized that the electrician, who was scheduled to work on our latest bathroom renovation, had arrived. My husband ran downstairs to let the poor guy know that his wife was in labor, and he was going to have to come back another time!

After I finished getting ready (and I confess that I even added a little makeup to my pale face that morning), I called my Mom to let her know that she should probably start thinking about buying her plane ticket. The plan all along had been for me to call her as soon as I was in labor, and I couldn't believe that I was finally making that phone call. I was a bit nervous that she'd arrive only to have things stall out, and so I asked her to wait an hour or so for an update from me before booking her flight. Although I had thought ahead of time that I might like to update my blog to let everyone know that I had gone into labor so that I could be cheered on all day long by my friends, I had absolutely no interest in doing so when the time came. For some reason it felt like a secret that I enjoyed keeping. I did send my friend Katie a text message, wishing her a happy thirtieth birthday, and letting her in on the fact that someone else would soon probably be sharing that birthday. I also had to let my friend Nina know that I wouldn't be meeting her for breakfast that morning as we had planned... "I think Finn has other plans!!!!" I texted her, and then "I think these are real ones".

I called my midwife around 10 am just to let her know that things were happening. She told me try to relax as much as I could and to let her know when things got a bit more unbearable. The contractions were still coming around five minutes apart and I was managing them well with some help from my husband. We started using another technique we learned in our yoga birth class, where he actually sat on my lower back while I kneeled over a chair. The pressure of his weight on my lower back felt amazing. At some point, we decided that it would be a good idea for him to walk our dog, who we would be leaving at home when we left for the hospital with the plan that my father-in-law would pick him up in a few hours. It was during this time when he was gone that I was sitting in our living room and felt a funny POP... followed by a huge gush of liquid. I jumped up, started to run towards the bathroom, then thought better of walking across our living room rug, and ran in the opposite direction into the kitchen. This moment sticks out in my mind so strongly. I had this amazing feeling that my body knew exactly what it was doing, when to do it, and that labor was progressing beautifully without my having to think about it or control it. Feeling like I was just along for the ride and trusting my body was so crucial for me during labor and I felt it so strongly in that moment.

The first thing I did after changing into a new pair of yoga pants was to call my mom and let her know that she should go ahead and book that plane ticket.